Abstract
That marriage has always been a property arrangement in some form or another – particularly for those families and couples with property to arrange – is a truism. It is a truism because marriage has significant property implications for the intended spouses, with the result that financial planning around marriage is both a historical and continuing reality, despite changes in the social and economic norms governing marriage. Moreover, the wealth management industry has, past and present, trained its eye and its expertise on marriage planning as part of a family’s larger wealth planning, offering services and products to help mitigate the economic risk of marriage to family wealth preservation. In particular, wealth managers and lawyers have long recommended that families pay close attention to the effects of divorce because “the divorce of a family member . . . can paralyse a [wealth] structure and produce major problems and uncertainty for the family members who have a stake in the family wealth structures.” Divorce, these advisors warn, presents a particularly grave danger because it redistributes family wealth in ways that the advisors characterize as not only undesirable but unjust: “[L]aws designed to protect a spouse can be abused to provide a spouse with rights to family businesses and wealth that by no stretch of the imagination should they have access to.” ...
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2021
Recommended Citation
Allison Tait, Custom of the Country: Trusts and Marriage Planning in High-Wealth Families, 34 J. Am. Acad. Matrim. Law. 219 (2021).
